This Kindle blog of Kindle Fire, Paperwhite, and other e-Ink Kindle tips and Kindle news - with links to Free Kindle Books (contemporary also) - explores the less-known capabilities of the Amazon Kindle readers and tablets. Ongoing tutorials, guides for little-known features and latest information on the Kindle Fire tablets and their competitors. Questions are welcome in Comments area.
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Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Expectations for it should be in line with what you'd expect from any mobile phone except for how much of a web page you can see on the screen (considerably more with the Kindle 2) and no color. Mobile unit web browsing is best done on sites which make versions for mobile units' small screens.

With a Kindle, you don't have to hunt for a WiFi hotspot and hope that it's free, because Wireless access is almost always available where there's Sprint cellphone coverage, but it's slower than WiFi, which is slower than your normal cabled Internet experience.

Most of the steps below (but not the 5-way button portion) work on a Kindle 1 also, though the Kindle 1 is slower in response time and doesn't always finish rendering a page with larger photos.

The key is knowing how to choose between several settings offered by the Home page's Menu option for "Experimental" which gets you to "Basic Web" (which you just click on, as the other options are not available there, only described).
The Kindle will ask you if you want Wireless 'On' if it's not on already and then you can OK that.

You are then taken to the Kindle's Bookmarks page with a choice of websites for mobile unit access. Press the Menu key there and choose Settings.
These are all toggled options.

The most used Settings to choose from when browsing would be:
1. "Switch to Advanced Mode" (if you're in "Basic Mode)
("Desktop" mode on DX's)
or "Switch to "Basic Mode" (if you're in Advanced Mode).
2. "Enable Javascript"
3. "Disable Images"

Choosing Modes:
. Basic mode, Disable Images - Fastest. Use when you just want data quickly and don't want to wait for images to load.
. Basic mode, Enable Images - 2nd fastest. Best with simpler websites and small photos.

With Basic mode, article bodies will be in B&W rather than the harder to read gray shades that emulate color gradations.
You'll need to remember that on pages with columns of links or ads, all of the first column's text will show up first, going down and you have to "Next Page" (or down-arrow) through them before getting to the center column for the article.

. Advanced Mode - Use this when you want to see the full width of a web page and all columns showing.
The browser will then make the fonts TINY to fit it all in and will emulate colors, giving harder-to-read multi-gray shaded text and sometimes the background may be too dark.
With some sites, it can be surprisingly readable though some will want a magnifying glass.
With this mode you won't have to page through several Kindle 'pages' of a website's left column.
The Kindle often chooses advanced mode, and when I want to read an article in the normal sized font, I'll switch to Basic and do the NextPage thing.

. Advanced Mode, Enable Javascript - the Kindle browser often switches to this when it knows javascript is needed to load the page at all. This will be the slowest mode.
Sometimes the javascript is needed just for an ad and you can do without it, and at those points I have sometimes tried "disabling" javascript to speed things up. But most won't bother as it doesn't make that big a difference. If javascript is needed but isn't enabled, the page never loads, so I tend to leave it alone.

Other web browser options:
. The browser Menu lets you "Enter URL" to go to a specific page you want.
. You can "Bookmark This Page" if you're on a webpage you want to return to without having to type the URL again.
. There's a (current-session) "History" page so you can jump to a webpage you want to revisit.
. You can "Go to Top" of the webpage.

Moving around the webpage
You can move around the page with the 5-way button, which will take you to areas for input, or links to click on for another web page or web-page area, and allow you to scroll down (instead of having to use 'NextPage' if you're on a long page.
To get back to the previous "jump" (from a link) press the "Back" key.

. You can generally change the text size but not the line spacing on a web page.
. You can download some files offered, usually "TXT" files and unprotected MOBI, PRC ones. The Kindle format is AZW, and you can download that and AZW1 files, though I've never seen these offered outside the Amazon store.

For more information and screen samples, see Section 6.1 "Using Basic Web" in the "Kindle 2 User's Guide, 2nd Edition" -- this is at Location 834,

Caution: Using wireless for browsing will drain the battery faster during a session than reading a Kindle document will. It'll be a shorter time before you need to recharge. Here are customer service advisories for how to keep the battery in good shape.

TIP: When sending an email from gmail.com or yahoo.com, you'll get an alert that a connection could not be established with the website's servers. 98% of the time, it's a false error alert. The email goes through (but typing on this unit is arduous, at best, so I e-mail rarely), and the same thing occurs with posting a reply to a forum. The reply does go through and is posted despite the alert. Do log in before posting, though.

The Basic Web browser on the smaller Kindles is extremely handy for quick lookups when away from your home/office computers. It isn't something you want to do at length, though I was surprised that Wired can come through so well, with good resolution on the photos on the Kindle 2.

FILE DOWNLOAD - BOOKMARKS
You can download a file of bookmarks I collected for mobile-optimized sites, which will load faster.

( If you find blog entries like this one helpful, please check the "Interesting" box so I can get an idea of the level of interest for how-to's for features not often used -- judging from what I read on the forums. Thanks for taking the tme. )
7/5/09 - I've eliminated the 'Interesting/Cool' Google widget because it caused the page to take too long to load, but on the Tips/Guides, it did give me good (easy to rate) indication of interest in those. Thanks to those who took the time let me know.

(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
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29 comments:

Do you have any advice on using Facebook from K2? I wonder if I just don't have the right settings, but it seems that I have a lot of trouble logging in, and when I do succeed, it's hard to "do" anything more than just read -- if I want to post a status update or comment on someone else's, it quite often makes me (try to) login again!

mathmom, That's one of the most complex pages on the entire Net! But, one can go in with http://m.facebook.com at least, which is a somewhat mobile-oriented scaled down version.

I decided to use Advanced with Javascript to go on there because the place is filled with scripts running.

When I logged on, that was okay, though the first time it said it couldn't be accessed and to try again, so I did.

Then I got on and read a few Wall comments from the crowd in my Wall area and chose one because someone had a new profile pic. I decided to comment there and explain that I was accessing with my Kindle as a test, and when I pressed SUBMIT or SEND, it said I had to log in first. Of course I HAD or I couldn't have read my 'wall.' So I logged in again, and it took it right away and submitted my note to the wall.

This may not be worth it to others, but when in a pinch outside the home, it's doable.

Except for making me log in again, it was not bad, and everything was readable. I took a photo of it but actually have just taken a screenshot, what was I thinking. I'll do an entry on it later. Am watching the Cliburn piano competition, live, in high def. Amazing world.

Anonymous, Yes, I was able to go to both. On the 3rd set of items on the right side there was an Error 400 and an error in the code. But I got into books and browsed.

It shows the full page and so the main font is tiny and the gray shade too light. When I chose a story, the font was still tiny and still light, so I went into Basic mode instead and then the story filled the screen with normal sized text in pure black and white and was easy to read.

Adultfanfiction was accessible except that the questions if you were over 18 or not were not readable due to the color combination , I guess. I looked at my pc. Clicked on it and then had to give them age and swear to die if I gave them the wrong info and that's as far as I got.

Remember that if what you're thinking of buying doesn't work for you, you do have up to 30 days to just call them to get a Return started, for any reasons for a full refund unless the unit has been damaged. They're good about that.

Yes! If you download the mobi-optimized website links-file I made, mentioned in this blog entry (I link to the explanation of the file and it has the download link), you'll see Skweezer in there, highly recommended. I love it.

I can get on the web without a problem but I cannot access Yahoo Mail .I get a message the web site you requested is not responding . I get on the Yahoo web site to start without a problem .The problem is getting the mail Any ideas

Anonymous - I used it at Barnes and Noble, actually, one day, so it's doable but I write in my entry here the problems people normally have with the not-connecting error message and that it's often spurious. I get that after sending an email but the email was actually sent (I describe this).

HOWEVER, when you log in anywhere, you usually need to be in 'advanced' mode (or 'desktop' mode with the DX) in order to beable to connect as you to read/write.

I do gmail on Kindle as it is more reliable than yahoo mail on it.

Also download my free mobile-optimized sites Kindle file with ready-made links and try the sites on the 2nd page that give you alternative links to 'Email' to see if those work better.

Tim, If Amazon allows the 3G web-browsing for more than Wikipedia it will be 'free' as they advertise. There are no charges. That's been true here in the U.S. and definitely in the UK, Japan and some other places.

They list '3G' web browsing (experimental) as one of the features on the Int'l page -- though that would be true wherever it is actually enabled for that.

I'll be interested to hear whether you are able to use 3G in New Zealand or not, for the Webkit web browser.

I would like you to look at this website called http://www.anysubjects.com, as it has hundreds of really great, Kindle-friendly websites for you to try out.

I got so frustrated with having to change the font size, screen settings etc to see a website, that I was tempted to give up. However, I had a better plan. I built the very first website designed to be seen on any Kindle, where all the links from my site are all Kindle-friendly.

Every link from my site is ready to be seen. You don't need to change the font or any of the settings to have a great Kindle browser experience. Try it today and see what you think.

Am often away much of the day, and postings won't show up right away. Posts done to use referrer-links may never show up.

Usually, am online enough to release comments within a day though, so the hard-to-read match-text tests for commenting won't be needed this way.

Feedback and questions are welcome. Thanks for participating.

Technical Problems?If you're having problems leaving a Comment, Google's blogger-help asks that you clear the 'blogger.com' cookies on your browser's Tools or Options menu bar and that will fix the Comment-box problems (until they have a permanent fix).

IF that doesn't work either, then UNcheck the "keep me signed in" box -- Google-help says that should allow your comment to post (it's a workaround to a current bug). Apologies for the problems.

TIP: There's a size limit. If longer than 3500 characters or so, in a text editor, make two posts out of it.

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